


Of Survivor’s Guilt and the Best Kind of Love

by rae_z



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gay, Hurt/Comfort, Husbands, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smut, some smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:40:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22112005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rae_z/pseuds/rae_z
Summary: Samwise Gamgee prided himself on being the steady one, the reliable one, the one Mr. Frodo could turn to in his direst time of need.But what happens when the Ring is gone?Sam is tormented by nightmares that steal his sleep and slink after him in the daylight, poisoning what could have been—what should have been—the best days of his life. Frodo is well. They both survived, and the Ring is destroyed.So why does he feel so guilty every time he sees the scarlet scars branding Frodo’s neck?~~~~~~~~A collection of angsty drabbles with lots of hurt/comfort and healing and happy endings. We like to pretend here that Frodo never left the Shire and the fellowship never disbanded after Aragorn was coronated. All these drabbles are related, but I don’t have enough creative juice to link them with filler and a concrete plot :))))))
Relationships: Aragorn | Estel/Arwen Undómiel, Frodo Baggins/Sam Gamgee
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	1. After the Coronation

**Author's Note:**

> The first collection of drabble! All this takes place after Aragorn’s coronation (movie-verse), and ends the next day.

Furtive glances are exchanged between the four hobbits, and a quick jab of the elbow from Merry to Pippin has everyone sketching an awkward bow in front of the new king.

Aragorn lets go of Arwen’s arm and kneels in front of the hobbits.

“My friends,” he says quietly, “you bow to no one.”

The four friends straighten up and watch, eyes wide in uncomfortable wonder, as the hundreds of people gathered in the King’s Pavilion bow.

To them.

Merry and Pippin are grinning, taking it all in, exchanging elbows in sides and trodding of toes as they fight the urge to whoop loudly and break out in song. Frodo is speechless, absently rubbing the persistent ache in his shoulder, but it is Sam who is the only one stricken.

He hides it well. The feasting after Aragon’s coronation is, of course, glorious even to a hobbit’s high standards, and Samwise eats his due fill, but come dessert, the slaps on the back and praises to he and Frodo’s arduous journey become too much to stand, and he slips out the back.

Frodo notices his absence less than a pair of heartbeats later. Intimately attuned to Sam’s steady presence, the lack of his warmth at Frodo’s side is distressing, so he climbs down from the table and goes off looking for him.

Sam is standing by the King’s Tree outside, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders slumped forward and head bowed.

“Sam?”

Sam flinches in surprise and hurriedly straightens.

“Mr. Frodo, sir, I was just lookin’ for some fresh air, you know. It gets mighty busy with all them Big Folk about.”

Frodo doesn’t miss the tears hiding behind Sam’s voice.

“I suppose we could stay out here for a while,” Frodo says, coming to stand next to Sam and admiring the flowering tree in front of them, “the air is much quieter out here.”

~~~

Restlessly wandering the dark hallways, kept up by nightmares about Nazgul and the Morgul blade piercing his shoulder, Frodo is stopped short by muffled cries echoing in the darkness.

He cocks his head to one side, listening, and his heart drops to his stomach when he realizes it’s coming from the room next to his.

Sam’s room.

Frodo is running before he takes another breath. He pushes as quietly as he can into Sam’s room and gropes for the candle burning quietly next to the door to light his way.

Sam is thrashing about in his bed, sheets tangled around his legs, sleep shirt stuck to his chest with sweat.

“Hold on, Mr. Frodo!” Sam mutters wildly, reaching in the darkness, “Take my hand!”

“Sam,” Frodo whispers, setting the candle down and rushing towards the bed, “Sam, my Sam, I’m right here. It’s just a nightmare.”

Frodo reaches for Sam’s outstretched hand. As soon as Sam feels skin touch his, he latches on, clinging with an almost painful intensity, and he pulls Frodo hard enough that he topples onto the bed, nose bumping into Sam’s sternum.

Finally, Sam relaxes, though is hold on Frodo is mighty tight.

“Sam,” Frodo manages, pushing ineffectually against Sam’s chest, “Samwise, you’re holding me too tight.”

Sam’s eyelids start to flutter, and after a moment, his eyes spring open and his hold loosens.

“Mr. Frodo? I was just...I was havin’ an awful nightmare about you an’ now you’re here? Am I still asleep?”

“No, Sam,” Frodo says gently, resting his forearms on Sam’s chest, “I’m alright, and you’re awake.”

Sam’s arms spring off him like he’s a hot frying pan, and he scrambles backwards.

“You should sleep, Mr. Frodo, sir. You’ve had a tryin’ time, and I won’t have you staying up on my account.”

Frodo’s brows knit together and he reaches for Sam, trying not to be hurt when Sam only scoots farther back, shaking his head adamantly.

“Go on, Mr. Frodo, I’ll be alright, you should go back to sleep.”

Frodo shakes his head.

“I don’t want to. I want...” he looks down briefly, thankful for the dark night concealing his blush, “I can’t sleep when I’m this far from you, Sam.”

Sam’s heaving chest begins to calm, and his white-knuckled hold on the bedsheets eases somewhat.

“Nothing seems the same,” he whispers after a moment, “an’ all the Big Folk are celebrating but I don’t see what there is to celebrate. All those dead, Mr. Frodo, sir, an’ all those injured...Boromir...Moria...everyone is happy an’ I can’t find nothing to be happy about. Every time I close my eyes I see you, or Gandalf, or that great beast in the mines of Moria, or that horrid creature Gollum, or you in those webs and I thought you were dead, and now I’m supposed to be happy? What is there to be happy about, Mr. Frodo?”

“Dear Sam,” Frodo whispers, reaching for Sam in the twilight, “my dear, brave Sam, it’s alright.”

Sam snatches his hand out of Frodo’s and stands, marching over to the window, arms folded tight against his chest.

“It’s not alright!” Sam snaps, “I wasn’t the bearer, and I don’t mean to pretend to suffer that same burden, but everything is still wrong and I can’t find nothin’ to be happy about, and...”

Sam’s voice breaks and he braces himself on the windowsill, chin dropping to chest and shoulders shaking with the force of his badly muffled sobs.

Frodo gets up on quiet feet and presses against Sam’s back, wrapping his arms around Sam’s middle and pressing his cheek to Sam’s back.

“Nothing is the same, my dear Sam,” Frodo whispers through tears of his own, “and we can’t go back to the Shire and pretend that it is. I may have the scars on my neck, my shoulder,” a pause, while Frodo swallows hard and continues in a tremulous whisper, “my hand...but you bore me through it, and if it left scars that I can’t see, I’ll tend them anyways for you.”

Sam finally clutches Frodo’s hands to his chest, and the two sink to the floor. Frodo rocks gently, forehead pressed to the back of Sam’s neck, and though the floor of Sam’s room is cold and hard, the two hobbits stay there until they catch their breath.

Eventually they sit up. Sam’s gaze is stuck firmly to the floor, his eyes red and swollen, his nose stuffy, and he stays there until Frodo kneels in front of him and takes his chin.

“Look up.”

Reluctantly, he does so, but he finds nothing but a gentle, warm kindness in Frodo’s starlit eyes and a warm cloth in one hand to clean his face.

“I can do it, Mr. Frodo,” Sam mutters, when Frodo means to clean his tear-streaked face.

“I know, but I’d like to.”

So, blushing red, Sam lets Frodo clean his face and place feather-light kisses on both eyes. Sam blows his nose, fisting the handkerchief in one hand, and slumps a little further, exhausted.

Frodo stands and extends a hand to him. Sam takes it and allows Frodo to lead him over to the dresser, where he strips his dirty nightshirt and tosses it and the handkerchief to the floor.

Frodo dips the cloth back into the ewer and squeezes out the excess. Sam watches him, somewhat suspicious but far too tired to protest, and when Frodo gently cleans his back with the warm, wet cloth, he can’t help but to sigh contentedly.

Sam’s cheeks turn a bright, fiery pink when Frodo moves to his chest, but it’s over soon and without incident, and the clean, fresh linen Frodo is helping him into is cool and comfortable.

“Come on,” Frodo says softly.

His fingers twine with Sam’s and he leads him to the bed.

“You don’t mean to leave, Mr. Frodo, do you?” Sam blurts, fingers tightening reflexively against Frodo’s hand.

“No, my dear Sam. I mean to stay forever, if you’ll have me.”

Sam blushes once more.

He climbs into the bed, settling down on the pillows, and Frodo climbs in after him. Expecting Frodo to settle down on his side of the bed, Sam is startled when Frodo nestles close and rests his head on Sam’s chest, throwing one arm across his chest and worming the other under Sam’s neck.

So passes the night.

~~

Aragorn and Gandalf let themselves in after a third unsuccessful knock on Sam’s door, rather worried at the disappearance of the Bearer and rightly guessing that Sam would know where he might be.

And though both man and wizard had an inkling of what was going on under those glances and quiet smiles, seeing it before them is a sweetly bitter confirmation. Sam and Frodo are tangled up in each other, blankets tugged up to their chins, their curly, unruly mops scattered about the pillows, holding onto each other with a ferocity that speaks to a powerful fear of being separated forever.

“Let them sleep,” Aragorn says softly, “they’ve done enough.”

Gandalf inclines his head.

“I’ll see that the gentle-hobbits are not bothered.”

~~

Sam and Frodo wake up at the same time. Both still mired in the warm embrace of a sleep free from nightmares, it takes them a moment to focus on the reality.

Frodo yawns and stretches lithely, shaking his hair out of his face. He nestles back into Sam’s warm embrace, and only then does he spot the look on Sam’s face.

“Sam?”

Sam blinks slowly, caught up in Frodo’s starlit eyes shimmering in the light from the window.

“Did you mean it, Mr. Frodo? What you said last night?”

“Yes,” Frodo says without any hesitation, his cheeks pinking, “yes, my dear Sam, I mean to never leave you.”

Then, one forearm propped on Sam’s chest for stability’s sake, Frodo leans forward and slowly, gently, presses his lips to Sam’s.

He pulls away slowly, eyes downcast, unwilling to look on the chance that Sam’s stiffness was not from pleased surprise, until Sam makes a strangled sound halfway between a moan and a sigh, thrusts his fingers into Frodo’s hair, and pulls him down into the kiss.

Frodo sighs into the kiss as he throws a leg over Sam’s hips and braces himself against the pillow beneath Sam’s head, and, when that’s not close enough, stretches out over Sam and presses a leg between both of Sam’s.

Sam tears his lips away from Frodo’s.

“Please mean it, Mr. Frodo,” he whispers, chest heaving, “don’t go where I can’t follow.”

“I mean it,” Frodo whispers.

They kiss again. Sam trails a hand down Frodo’s back, following the curve of his spine to where it meets his bum, and the quiet moan Frodo breathes against his lips is encouragement enough for Sam to squeeze.

Frodo’s hips jerk instinctively, but, finding that the rub of his erection against Sam’s soft stomach is rather delightful, he thrusts again and kisses Sam, one arm wrapped around his neck, the other bracing against the pillow.

Suddenly, with only a tightening of Sam’s fingers on his bum as a warning, Frodo finds himself on his back and Sam insistently working the waistband of his pants.

“What?” Frodo asks breathlessly, “What did I do wrong?”

Sam’s gaze snaps up.

“Nothin’, Mr. Frodo, sir, I, just...” Sam’s fingers hesitate over Frodo’s rather obvious erection, and his cheeks glow pink, “I’d rather like to taste you, if that be alright with you, Mr. Frodo, sir.”

Frodo lets out a ragged breath.

“Oh, Sam, I think I would like that.”

So Sam frees Frodo from the constraint of his sleep pants, his warm breath ghosting over Frodo’s erection. His hips buck in response, until Sam’s big, warm hands press them to the mattress, until Sam has had his fill of licks and kisses, then he wraps one of them around Frodo’s erection and pulls gently.

Sam’s name slips from Frodo’s mouth reverently as his fingers tighten in the sheet, and at the warm, wet heat of Sam’s mouth, Frodo gasps his name again as his head tips back.

There had been thoughts, on their journey to Mordor, thoughts and furtive glances and touches that lingered just too long to be proper, but Sam had been so worried, and Frodo had his hands more than full with the Ring’s power tugging him to the fever’s edge of insanity, so now, with safety and more time than either of them could have imagined, and a bed big enough to hold four hobbits, (proven by Pippin and Merry and Sam all hopping on it when Frodo had woken), Frodo and Sam finally have the freedom to explore what had been budding between them.

It’s the frantic touch of two hobbits that have faced certain death yet survived, the too-tight grip of a hand that saw its match dangled over the fires of Mount Doom; it’s the fists in sheets and the sloppy kisses and the unspeakably urgent desire to never let go that drives them both over the edge.

And it’s Sam’s bare shoulders shaking that catches Frodo’s sleepy attention.

“Sam?”

Sam just hunches in on himself and shakes his head. Frodo scoots closer and presses a hand to Sam’s back, to the scar sustained from that horrid spider, and kisses the back of his neck.

Finally,

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Mr. Frodo,” says Sam miserably, face buried in his hand, “I can’t find nothin’ to be happy about!”

Frodo, at a loss of what to say, chooses to just pull Sam into his chest, to wrap around him, to hold him until the tears dry.

Sam sniffs and wipes his nose.

“I’m hungry.”

Frodo can’t help but to smile widely.

“Me too, my Sam. Me too.”


	2. The Second Bearer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frodo bore the Ring to Mordor, but Samwise bore Frodo along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More drabble. This takes place within a month after the first one, still in Minas Tirith. I'm starting to use these ficlets as a way to practice different writing styles, which is turning out to be more fun than I thought.  
> (That is to say: there is No Plot linking this together and is more a series of scenes that pop into my head, and I write them with one particular goal in mind. The goal for this ficlet was to avoid using And Then.)  
> Enjoy!

Gandalf sweeps his robes to the side, freeing him to sit next to the two hobbits. Frodo is fast asleep, as he is wont to do lately, head in Sam’s lap, fingers curled around Sam’s calf.

“Good evening,” Gandalf says quietly.

  
Sam blinks a few times, somewhat startled. He’d been staring moodily off into the night sky, only aware of Frodo’s hair under his fingers and the sweet smell of the King’s tree blossoming behind him.

  
“Evenin’, Mr. Gandalf, sir.”

  
Gandalf pulls out his pipe and a small packet of pipe-weed. The smell is comforting to Samwise as Gandalf packs and lights his pipe. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly as Gandalf blows several pristine smoke-rings into the night sky.

  
“Injuries are not always physical, Master Gamgee,” says Gandalf heavily.

  
Sam’s eyebrows furrow and his fingers tighten in Frodo’s hair.

  
“What’re you talking about, Mr. Gandalf?”

  
There’s a pause, then Sam feels a large, gentle hand rest on his shoulder.

  
“You, dear hobbit.”

“I’m not hurt,” Sam says stubbornly, “Mr. Frodo is the one who’s hurt. You don’t see me sleepin’ as much as he does.”

“Oh, Samwise.” Gandalf lets out a heavy breath. “The injuries of the mind are a tricky malady, you see. I fear even I cannot heal them the same way I heal maladies of the body. But, listen here.”

Gandalf kneels in front of Sam, his grey eyes kindly and warm, and gently chucks the hobbit under the chin.

“Just because you did not bear the Ring does not mean it didn’t affect you.”

Sam’s eyes fill with tears and he looks down. Several tears drip off his chin and land in Frodo’s dark, curly mop, and Sam starts shaking his head.

“You haven’t seen him, Mr. Gandalf, sir. You haven’t seen the scars on his chest or the way he thrashes in the night, Gandalf, sir, or those horrid marks around his neck from a tiny golden ring. I’ve got none of that.”

Gandalf tugs a handkerchief from a pocket and offers it to Sam, who furtively takes it and wipes his cheeks.

“You were the only one who Frodo could trust,” Gandalf says quietly, a comforting hand on Sam’s shoulder, “That takes a heavy toll, Master Hobbit. You were a Bearer of your own kind.”

A pause. Gandalf gently squeezes Sam’s neck, finally getting the hobbit’s watery-eyed attention.

“You Bore Frodo, Master Gamgee, from the Shire all the way to Mordor. Do not be ashamed of the toll it took on you.”

Sam presses his lips together, trying so very hard not to burst into tears, as Frodo really does need his sleep, but Frodo is already stirring, and he’s already blinking his eyes open.

“Sam?” Frodo asks sleepily, “Where are we? What is it? What's wrong?”

Sam just shakes his head, so Frodo levers upwards and nods to Gandalf, his surprise tugging his eyebrows together.

“I was telling Master Gamgee not to be ashamed of his tears,” says Gandalf gently, “and I shall take my leave, now, should you desire privacy.”

Frodo nods, and Gandalf sweeps off.

“Sam,” Frodo says softly, trailing a knuckle across Sam’s tear-stained cheek, “it’s alright.”

Sam starts shaking his head almost wildly, and the words come with a similarly fevered intensity.

“I just don’t understand it, Mr. Frodo, sir. Mr. Gandalf was sayin’ that I Bore you to Mordor, even though you did most of the walkin’ yourself, and he was sayin’ that bearing you to Mordor took a toll on me the same way bearing the Ring to Mordor took a toll on you, but I just…I don’t…”

The bewildered look on Sam’s face would be rather adorable had it not been interrupted by tear-stained cheeks and red, swollen eyes.

“I’d say he’s quite right,” Frodo says simply, taking Sam’s hands in his, “without my brave Samwise Gamgee, I’d have barely made it out of the Shire.”

Sam’s mouth opens and closes several times, as if he’s not quite sure what to say to that.

“The Ring’s hold on me was…so powerful, Sam,” Frodo says quietly, squeezing Sam’s hands, “it made me helpless. If you weren’t there…I don’t think I would have survived.”

Sam’s hands tighten on Frodo’s to an almost painful intensity.

“Don’t say that, Mr. Frodo,” he snaps, “don’t…don’t.”“It’s true. The more time I have away from that…” Frodo frowns as if he doesn’t have a word nasty enough for the Ring, “that thing, the more clarity I get. I bore the ring to Mordor, and…you bore me.”

Frodo smiles so sweetly, then, his starlit eyes shining so brightly that Sam has no choice but to lean forward and kiss him.

Frodo pulls away.

“Do you understand, my Sam?”

Sam blinks a few times, dazzled by the sweetness of the kiss.

“Understand, Mr. Frodo?”

“Do you understand that you were a Bearer, too?”

Sam’s lips thin and his fingers tighten on Frodo’s thigh, but after a moment he sighs and the tension releases.

“I suppose.”A teasing smile tilts up Frodo’s lips.

“You suppose?” Frodo clambers up onto Sam’s lap and wraps his arms around his neck. “Samwise the Brave only _supposes_ that he had the most important job in all of Middle Earth. How very typical of the bravest hobbit I know to only suppose that.”

Sam can’t help smiling at Frodo’s gentle ribbing. His hands settle comfortably on Frodo’s waist and they kiss sweetly.

“Supper?” Sam asks after Frodo pulls away.

Frodo nods, clambering off Sam’s lap and taking his hand.

“Then to bed with us.”

Sam’s cheeks flare a rosy red, and Frodo grins at it.


End file.
